The day after the GOP sweep of Texas, and the country, I was confronted with three instances of ovarian cancer: the death of a friend of a friend, a recurrence for a friend who had been disease-free for two years, and the hopeful prognosis of a friend just finishing her first course of chemo. Ovarian cancer is the only thing that makes me feel more angry and helpless than the election outcomes do. In each case my outrage is largely due to my inability to change what will happen to the women involved. What will happen to me and the people I care about.
Image from Texas Tribune
I don’t know why I want to compare ovarian cancer to the oppression of Texas politics, specifically, the oppression of Texas social and environmental policy. Women don’t have access to affordable healthcare, gay marriage is not legal, drilling, fracking, and mining are among the highlights of economic prosperity heralded by state leaders, and we are running out of water. As a result of these policies, low-income women in most of Texas cannot get mammograms, cancer screenings, birth control pills and other healthcare previously provided by clinics that have now been closed. As a result, my partner and I apparently have to pay more than heterosexuals for our family health insurance policy. As a result, Texas has more frequent earthquakes because of the now honeycombed earth. As a result, affluent people are drilling their own wells to be sure they and theirs have enough water.
And I am afraid of possibilities of the future. Thanks to an editorial on Pregnancy and Civil Rights, I am afraid of the future (and the present) where even women who WANT to be pregnant in Iowa can be convicted of attempted fetal homicide for merely falling down the stairs and subsequently seeking treatment at a hospital.
With ovarian cancer, it’s just you and your body which has betrayed you. Your body has grown this malignancy that doesn’t hurt at first, or sometimes ever. It just grows and spreads and, ultimately, will kill you. Early detection is the best chance for cure, but the tumor grows without you knowing. The tumor accumulates strength and leverages your lymph system to spread all over your body; it will go everywhere. Once it spreads, it cannot be stopped. You can poison your entire body with chemotherapy to try to kill the tumor, but it makes you sick and weak. In the end, you try to find palliative care to make your transition more comfortable.
In state and local politics, we volunteer and give our meager individual donations. We send emails to the senators who would amend the constitution to cement the absence of human and civil rights for those of us beyond the embryo stage. And then, Saturdays, we, like our GOP brethren, watch our college football teams play on Fox TV. Our protests weakened such that all we can do is look away when the upbeat Koch Industries commercials air during the game. The GOP and their PACS have spread through our lymph system to every node of of our lives.
The metaphor breaks down because I do not feel as bleak as this little narrative has turned out to be. The metaphor breaks down because oppression does hurt and we are aware of it, unlike an ovarian tumor. The metaphor breaks down because many of us and our work and vision and money are also spreading through our societal lymph system. We still inhabit every node of our lives. And, in the 33 years since my own stage III germ cell ovarian cancer diagnosis, the survival rates for that type have gone from < 20 percent to > 80 percent. Thank God, the metaphor breaks down!
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